Boycotting a whole language...

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Platini said he thought those advocating a boycott of Israel were “ill advised”.

UEFA should also announce that any nation or player that refuses to go to Israel 2013, on grounds of prejudice against Israeli Jews, should be banned from international football.

In the past, unlike UEFA, the world footballing body FIFA has had a history of condemning Israel while turning a blind eye to the abuse of soccer players around the world, including the torture of the Iraqi national team by Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, and the use of terrorist activities or mass executions at football stadiums in Afghanistan, Chile, Russia and Gaza. (For more, see here.)

(Incidentally, so much for the claims by Cantona and others of “Apartheid Israel”. Only last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfortunately injured his leg – which had to then be put in a cast – when he slipped while playing in a Jewish and Arab children’s football match in Israel.)

In any case, those advocating boycotts and sanctions against the democratic state of Israel seem to be fighting a losing battle. Both Israel and the West Bank – and even now Gaza – are enjoying fast improving economies while much of the rest of the world is experiencing economic turbulence.

Tourism to Israel reached record levels last month and the annual MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index, which charts visitor traffic and tourist spending in 132 cities around the world, has just announced that Tel Aviv now ranks as the fifth most visited city in the Middle East and Africa.

On Monday, the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, speaking at a major tech conference in Tel Aviv, said that Google’s development centres in Israel are among the company’s most efficient in the world. “We love Israel,” Schmidt said, “The decision to invest in Israel was one of the best that Google has ever made.”

Also on Monday, another technology giant, Facebook, announced that it was buying Face.com, a tiny 11-person Israeli company that provides facial-recognition technology that helps Facebook users identify and tag photos, for an estimated $100 million.

I do hope Alice Walker wasn’t using a computer, smart phone or voice mail to carry out her boycott calls – practically every advanced computer and phone in the world is now dependent on Israeli technology. She shouldn’t be using Google or Facebook either, of course. Nor Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo, all of which have key R&D facilities in Israel.

And she better be careful should she need to go to the doctor. Life-saving drugs to help treat heart problems, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and many other medical conditions were all developed in Israel.

For a writer to boycott an entire language is a shameful act.

Tom Gross is the former Middle East correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. For more by him, please see www.tomgrossmedia.com